Synopses & Reviews
2012 marks Walmart's 50th year anniversary.
Walmart: Key Insights and Practical Lessons from the World's Largest Retailer highlights how Walmart came to be a global retailing phenomenon and investigates what it got right, what it got wrong and whether or not it can reconfigure to stay ahead.
Authors Natalie Berg, Global Research Director at Planet Retail, and Bryan Roberts, Director of Retail Insights at Kantar Retail, offer an objective analysis of Walmart's history exploring the company's ups and downs. Although a source for best practice in a number of retail disciplines such as procurement, logistics, systems and store format innovation, the retail giant is now facing several issues that affect where it is headed in the future.
With exclusive interviews with Walmart executives and CEO of Walmart US, Bill Simon, Berg and Roberts address these issues focusing specifically on the following topics:
- The rapid change of retail: What the rise of e-commerce and multi-channel retailing means for Walmart and other retailers and how the impact of Amazon affects every retailer's digital presence.
- Walmart International: Walmart now trades through more stores internationally than in the US, a clear indication of where future growth opportunities lie. Can Walmart's pricing philosophy "everyday low prices" be implemented across all markets? The authors explore where it works, where it doesn't and where it has yet to venture.
- The superstore format: Berg and Roberts predict that Walmart will reach saturation with its core Supercenter format by 2020. With more shoppers moving away from the superstore format, should Walmart move towards small box stores? Will they be able to achieve the same level of success with small stores in big cities?
In a time of rapid change, will the world's largest retailer be able to reconfigure? Walmart provides the necessary insights to understand how it became a retail giant, the lessons that can be learned, and what is in store for the future.
Review
"Every brand wants to understand how to sell to Walmart; this book empowers the reader to understand the strategy behind the giant retailer and gives the reader a strong foundation to improve their relationship and sales with all retailers. This is not a book for those who want to sell at the cheapest price - it is a book that teaches how to build a long-term branded business."
--Phil Lempert, Supermarket Guru and editor The Lempert Report
"Walmart is a unique book. It combines a comprehensive history of Walmart's methodical rise to greatness with a host of scenarios for its future growth. Must-reading for anyone who wants to know how Walmart did it and where it could be going - in the US and internationally. Roberts and Berg have done a terrific job." --Brian Sharoff, President of the Private Label Manufacturers Association (PLMA)
"What we have in this volume is a reasonably thorough examination of the organization's rapid growth in terms of both domestic and international markets as well as of its dominance of those markets and even of entire brand categories." --Robert Morris
"[A] well-researched case study...Business students and owners will benefit from the unique perspective Berg and Roberts provide. They offer a peek 'behind the curtain' and access to information rarely shared." --ForeWord Reviews
"Berg and Roberts draw on their extensive research to provide significant insights and a unique perspective into Walmart's growth from a regional retailer to the world's largest distributor of consumers good and services. They trace Walmart as a competitor, to Walmart as a trend setter, and perhaps even a model to which contemporary global marketers will look for their own success...with a penchant for detail, [they] thoroughly examine the tremendous influence Walmart has had and continues to have on global marketing...an objective commentary on Walmart's organizational leadership and ability to innovate and adapt to the realities and challenges of the future competitive arena...Summing Up: Recommended." --CHOICE
"With plenty of combined experience working for Walmart and its competitors, Berg and Roberts are familiar with every twist, turn, foible, and forte of Walmart's retail practices...In addition to their elucidation of the company's domestic presence, [they] also explore Walmart's global ventures, dutifully documenting both their successes...and failures...and illuminating the corporation's ability to learn from good and bad outcomes...Numerous valuable insights for business students and industry professionals." --Publishers Weekly
"Natalie Berg and Bryan Roberts …examine how Walmart has forever changed retailing, production and distribution methods, as well as consumer behavior. Today, the chain faces new challenges as the US market becomes saturated, consumer habits evolve and the international landscape changes. … getAbstract recommends this well-researched corporate biography to business historians, retailers, analysts and Walmart shoppers everywhere." --getAbstract
"Based on interviews with the company's executives and CEO Bill Simon, this title follows the changing trends of the retail market and considers lessons other retailers can learn from Walmart's growth and decisions. A fine recommendation for any business holding." --Midwest Book Review
Synopsis
Walmart is the largest retailer in the world with market leadership in all key markets and rapid expansion into emerging markets. From its humble beginning in Arkansas, it has become a global retailing phenomenon. For retailers, Walmart is a tough competitor as well as a source of best practice in a number of retail disciplines such as procurement, logistics, systems and store format innovation. For suppliers, for whom Walmart routinely accounts for between 10 and 40% of total sales, every move that Walmart makes has profound impact on their financial performance and how they do business.
Analysts Roberts and Berg present an objective analysis of Walmart. It addresses the retailer's history, procurement, supply chain and logistics, the importance to vendors, IT and systems, pricing and marketing, multichannel retailing, globalization and future.
Investigating what the retailer gets right, as well as what it gets wrong, Walmart provides a comprehensive insight into the many functions which contribute to its operations. The book helps retailers learn from best practice, rivals to better compete against Walmart and vendors to better service one of their most important customers.
Synopsis
Walmart provides a detailed assessment of the world's largest retailer that forever changed the face of retailing. The book examines Walmart's successes, failures, and whether it can stay ahead for the next 50 years. Despite being a source for best practice in procurement, logistics, systems and store format innovation, the retail giant is now facing several issues that affect its future development. Starting from its inception in rural Arkansas in 1962, this objective analysis of Walmart's history addresses the rapid change of retail, including the rise of e-commerce and multi-channel retailing; Walmart International and its 'everyday low prices' philosophy; the saturation of the superstore format, and much more.
In a time of rapid change, will the world's largest retailer be able to reconfigure? Walmart provides the necessary insights for retailers, advertisers, other business professionals and students to understand how Walmart became a retail giant, the lessons that can be learned, and what is in store for the future.
Synopsis
1. Is Walmart the best positioned retailer on the globe?
2. Rise of consumerism
Arrival of the boom times
3. House of (Walmart) brands
Shifting away from national brands
Great values
The globalization of private label
The brands behind the private labels
4. Don't aggravate the customer
I can't believe it's not on shelves
We didn't add back 3,000… no it was more like 9,000
SKU rationalization: far from perfection but a vital process
Doing more with less
Outsmarting the elephant
5. It's an EDLP world
The consumer advocate and king of deflation
Recession lesson #1: never take your eye off the customer
The path to efficiency
How Walmart broke the supermarket pricing model
Too concerned with trading down over trading out
No need for weapons of mass distraction
Preço Baixo Todo Dia: is it an EDLP world?
EDLP doesn't exist without EDLC
Kakaku Yasuku - EDLP implementation isn't always seamless
Walmart versus inflation
6. Walmart and its suppliers
Walmart and its supplier: the evolution of collaboration
Canoeing with P&G
Dinner with General Electric
Collaboration takes hold
Is collaboration on the wane?
'Tough but fair negotiations'
The dependence of US suppliers on Walmart
Pharmaceuticals and alcohol have a convoluted route to the shopper
Tobacco & confectionery - the McLane clause
Lack of disclosure from private and international businesses
Reliance on Walmart as high as 55 per cent
P&G leading the way
The power is now with Walmart
Walmart's shopper-centricity driving customer-centricity from suppliers
Is Walmart lacking insight?
As Walmart evolves, suppliers must follow suit
Structural alignment is key
Assortment editing and the impact on suppliers
Vendors and sustainability
7. Removing the margin-takers
The evolution of global sourcing at Walmart
New global sourcing strategy unveiled in 2010
Does global buying really exist?
Grocery is still a national business
Walmart's quest for leverage
Global Brands Imports gaining traction
GMCs yielding results
8. Still leading in logistics
The scale of Walmart's logistics system
In-house supply chain development
Food for thought
Supplier collaboration
Globalizing supply chain excellence
Globalizing one country at a time
Greening the supply chain
Implications for suppliers
9. The surest way to predict the future is to invent it
Technology takes hold in the 1970s
The 1980s: technology acceleration in-store
Opening the inner sanctum: Walmart's use of third-party IT suppliers
Data warehousing: helping Walmart drink from a hosepipe of information
Retail Link: a new era for Walmart and its suppliers
The false dawn of RFID
The globalization of technology in Walmart
Technology and private label development
Price optimization
Bean counting and number-crunching
In-store technology
'Our computer really does give us the power of competitive advantage'
10. Facing up to a multi-channel future
From Little Rock to Big Apple
The Supercenter and Walmart's rise to grocery domination
The final frontier: getting bigger by going small
The icing on the cake
The British are coming
Grandma, the Manhattanite and fraternity boys
The kinds of convenience: US drugstores
Living off Walmart's crumbs
Digital evolution
Democratization of technology
Amazon - 'the Walmart of our era'
Going global.com
11. Going global: Walmart's international retail leadership
Walmart International's market entry strategies
By the numbers
Walmart International in context
Walmart International performance
The scope and scale of Walmart International
Channel strategy
Small-box development
Walmart International: the good, the bad and the ugly
Where next?
12. Tomorrow's Walmart
Appendix
Further reading
Index
About the Author
Bryan Roberts has spent over ten years as a Walmart analyst and has gained great understanding of Walmart's strategies, objectives and achievements. He is Retail Insights Director for Kantar Retail EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa), based in London. Prior to joining Kantar Retail, Bryan was the Global Research Director at Planet Retail, a leading retail analyst firm.
Natalie Berg has spent years working alongside major retailers and vendors as they seek to better compete with, or partner with, Walmart. Her main expertise lies in areas such as private label, merchandizing, pricing and shopper-centricity. She is a Research Director at Planet Retail, a leading retail analyst firm. Table of Contents
-Walmart's annual sales in 2010 stood at $419 billion: if it were a country, it would be the world's 25th largest in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), ahead of Norway
-Analyzes key areas where Walmart excels, such as: positioning, logistics, branding, customer service, profit margins and globalization
-Contains interviews with the leading figures in the success of the business including the President and CEO of Walmart US, Bill Simon